Tuesday, August 2, 2016

“Of all the challenges America faces on the geopolitical scene in the second decade of the 21st century, the most dangerous is the resurgence of Russia under President Putin.” Admiral James Stavridis

“Europe needs to step up to the mark,” Shirreff says. He also says the West needs to commit once more to a dialogue with Russia. That’s made harder by the fact that Russia is always sensitive to lectures from the West, resentful about perceived condescension from Europe and the U.S. Still, stony silence is unlikely to bring a resolution. “Communication” is what Shirreff hopes for, not war. “But it’s gotta be backed up by strength.”

"Christopher Harmer, a military analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast, “To a far greater extent than the United States, Russian transport helicopters are designed for dual use in an attack role. The Mi-8 was originally designed as medium-lift utility transport but the Russians use it extensively as an attack helicopter. This particular model may have been selected so that they could portray the mission as humanitarian in nature, but the overwhelming majority of Russian rotary-wing operations in Syria are attack missions.”

Regardless of whether the Russian claim that the helicopter was returning from a humanitarian mission is true, the fact that it was carrying rocket pods meant that it would have been perceived as a real threat from the ground, making it a legitimate target."

"If we accept the position that big states can ride roughshod over little states, that treaties are irrelevant and that we don't care whether we have solemn commitments to allies we are encouraging further attacks against our allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East," said Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Whether the Crimean people welcomed Russia's invasion is irrelevant, said Blank, as "it was still a clear aggression of a country." And he noted that Trump's remarks have a potential ripple effect, providing an invitation for the estimated 25 million Russian minorities in post-Soviet states "to agitate for the dismemberment of their countries" and a return to the Russian fold."

"Mr. Trump may have been correct when he said, “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.” But the point is that such matters are, in this century, meant to be decided democratically, not by a military conquest shrouded in deception.

This may be why Mr. Trump, for all his praise of Mr. Putin, could not back him on Crimea."

"In short, Russia is using closer economic ties and diplomatic overtures towards the GCC countries as a stepping-stone for a diplomatic reengagement of Saudi Arabia on Putin’s terms. Even though Saudi Arabia desires Assad’s overthrow, Riyadh’s overarching agenda is to reduce its security dependence on the United States and maintain Saudi Arabia’s position as the Arab world’s most influential country. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is likely to respond favorably to Russian diplomatic overtures, if Putin can build a broad-based Arab coalition around a political solution to the Syrian crisis that includes Assad. Should Putin’s relationships with the GCC bloc continue to strengthen, Moscow’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is more likely to thaw than to descend into prolonged hostility."

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump repeatedly sought to gain a place for his Trump-branded towers in Russia and other former Soviet states, even in the 1980s, when the communist empire was first opening itself up to Western business investment.

While those efforts weren’t successful, the New York businessman has been able to attract investors from the former Soviet Union to Trump-branded projects outside of Russia.

Included among those are the Trump SoHo in New York, built by Bayrock, a development group headed by a wealthy Kazakh businessman, and the Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto, which was developed by a Russian émigré.

A spokesman for the Trump campaign said the candidate didn’t have a comment on specific projects, but he said Mr. Trump hasn’t had and doesn’t currently have projects in Russia.

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In an interview with ABC News over the weekend, Donald Trump seemed to suggest that Russia doesn't have a presence in Ukraine even though its forces invaded the country and took control of a region called Crimea in 2014. On Monday, Trump said that he meant Russia wouldn't go further into Ukraine if he was president. Photo: AP

Mr. Trump also told ABC that he had no investments or debts in Russia. But he has made clear over the past two decades that he was interested in doing deals there from the time the former Soviet Union began to open up.

In his book “The Art of the Deal,” published in 1987, Mr. Trump and his co-author wrote about his attempt to build a “large luxury hotel” across the street from the Kremlin in a joint-venture partnership with the Soviet government after meeting the Soviet ambassador at a luncheon.

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Donald Trump and Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh businessman, at the Trump SoHo launch in 2007 in New York.Photo: Mark Von Holden/WireImage/Getty Images

After receiving encouragement from the ambassador that Soviet Union tourism officials might be interested in a deal, Mr. Trump said he flew with his then-wife to Moscow and stayed in Lenin’s former suite at the National Hotel.

“I was impressed with the ambition of the Soviet officials to make a deal,” Mr. Trump wrote. The project never got off the ground.

In the 2000s, he began working with a Kazakhstan metals businessman, Tevfik Arif, who sought to help Mr. Trump build hotels in Moscow, in Kiev, in Poland and elsewhere.

The overseas projects proposed by Mr. Arif also fell through, but Mr. Trump said at the time that he expected to do more deals in Russia.

Asked in a 2007 legal deposition whether he had any concerns about doing business in Russia, Mr. Trump said he didn’t.

“I think there’s risk in doing any deal,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s ridiculous that we wouldn’t be investing in Russia. Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.”

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In the wake of allegations that Russia may have been behind the DNC email hack, Donald Trump said he hopes the Russians are able to access and release Hillary Clinton's past emails. Photo: AP

In the same deposition, a lawyer asked Mr. Trump about a newspaper report that quoted him saying that he would be “crazy” to invest in Russia.

Mr. Trump responded that he would never have said that because he wouldn’t want to invite the displeasure of a Russian politician since he hoped to do business there in the future.

Mr. Arif built Trump SoHo, giving Mr. Trump an ownership stake in exchange for the use of his name. Mr. Arif’s firm, Bayrock, counted Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire in the metals industry whose business is based in Kazakhstan, as a key funding backer, according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Mashkevich, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has offered varying accounts of his relationship with Mr. Arif. In a 2007 deposition in a civil lawsuit, he said Mr. Arif was his primary contact at Bayrock, now defunct. In a 2011 deposition for a different lawsuit, he said he didn’t know Mr. Arif well.

In an interview with the Journal in May, Mr. Trump said he believed he came to know Bayrock through the late developer Tamir Sapir, who was an investor with Mr. Arif’s company in Trump SoHo.

Mr. Sapir, who emigrated from Georgia in the Soviet Union to New York in the 1970s, leveraged business ties in his home country to become a successful developer, according to his corporate biography. He was a booster of trade between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which led him to become a foreign partner for Russia’s emerging oil industry.

In a speech in 2008, published in a trade publication, Mr. Trump’s son Eric said: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” including the SoHo project.

Mr. Arif couldn’t be reached for comment.

Mr. Trump’s partner in his Canadian project, Trump Toronto, is Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-born émigré who was until recently married to the daughter of Boris Birshtein, a Lithuanian-born international trader. Mr. Shnaider has said in interviews with Canadian media that his former father-in-law opened doors for him in the former Soviet Union and helped establish him in steel trading, where he made his fortune.

Mr. Shnaider’s spokesman said he had no desire to discuss Mr. Trump.

In his 2015 financial disclosure, Mr. Trump also reported that he made more than $2.5 million from an Azerbaijan deal that lent his name to a tower being developed by the son of an Azerbaijan government minister.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, relations between Russia and the Gulf Cooperation Council have deteriorated sharply due to disagreements between both actors over thefuture of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Russia has strongly supported Assad, claiming that his Baathist regime is a bulwark against Islamic extremism. By contrast, the Saudi-led GCC has actively supported Assad’s ouster, as his demise would reduce Iran’s regional influence. This discord, combined with a Russian-Saudi oil-price war, has caused many Middle East experts to argue that Russia-GCC relations are at a historic nadir.

A closer examination of geopolitical dynamics in the Middle East reveals that growing perceptions of a crisis in Russia-GCC relations are misplaced. In fact, a credible case can be made that Russia’s geopolitical influence and soft power in the Persian Gulf has increased since the start of President Vladimir Putin’s third term in 2012. Through stronger investment linkages and diplomatic overtures, Russia has attempted to carve out a more prominent geopolitical role in the Persian Gulf. Russia is unlikely to threaten Saudi Arabia’s hegemony over the GCC bloc. But stronger relations between Moscow and Saudi Arabia’s closest allies have caused some GCC countries to be more receptive to Russia’s calls for a political solution in Syria. Saudi Arabia’s fear of being isolated from the Arab world’s consensus could cause Riyadh to eventually soften its belligerent anti-Assad approach and diplomatically reengage with Russia. This scenario differs dramatically from the Russian-Saudi collision course predicted by many regional analysts.

Notwithstanding their disagreements over Syria, Russia has strengthened economic ties with Qatar, the UAE, Oman and Kuwait to balance against Saudi Arabia’s hegemony in the Persian Gulf. These economic linkages have been successful in resolving long-standing disputes that have impeded cooperation between Russia and the Gulf states for decades.

Yet Russia has attempted to find common ground with Qatar through energy sector cooperation. Russian energy giant Gazprom has expanded its cooperation with Qatargas on liquefied natural gas production.

When asked about the Russian energy minister’s calls for $500 million in annual trade between Moscow and Doha in June, Qatar’s Energy Minister Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada called for a significant expansion of bilateral economic cooperation at both the governmental and private-sector levels. Qatar’s long-standing strategy of omnibalancing to maximize its regional influence means that expanding economic ties with Russia is a rational move for Doha. Therefore, Russia has an opportunity to carve out an economic foothold in the Gulf country that has historically been the most hostile towards Moscow.

A similar pattern can be observed in Russia’s relationships with other Gulf countries. According to Evgeny Satanovsky, president of the Moscow-based Institute of the Middle East, Oman’s trade linkages are largely detached from broader geopolitical developments in the Middle East. This detachment has allowed Russian-Omani trade relations to grow from $13 million in 2010 to $100 million in 2014.

Investment linkages have strengthened Russia’s relationship with the UAE as well. Emirati businessmen have invested in facilities for the 2014 winter Olympic games in Sochi, assisted in the construction of a major port near St. Petersburg and cooperated with Rosneft in pipeline construction projects. These financial deals, combined with Russia’s historically robust partnership with Kuwait and increasingly close ties with Bahrain, have expanded Russia’s economic presence in Saudi Arabia’s backyard.

Despite a significant uptick in economic cooperation between Russia and the Gulf states, Moscow has struggled to develop reliable security partnerships in the GCC. These alliance-building struggles have caused many Saudi policymakers to view Russia as a marginal player in the Gulf. In a recent interview with GMU Professor Mark Katz, a leading expert on Russia’s Middle East strategy, Katz told me that before the Syrian crisis, Saudi Arabia viewed Russia’s policy in the Gulf as entirely mercenary. Therefore, many Saudi policymakers believed that they would be able to get Russia to comply with Riyadh’s preferences simply by outbidding Iran as a trade partner and purchasing Russian arms.

To demonstrate to Saudi Arabia and the international community that Russian diplomatic activities in the Gulf are not solely motivated by Moscow’s economic interests, Kremlin policymakers have actively engaged GCC countries on achieving a political resolution to the Syrian conflict that aligns with Russian objectives.

Oman and Kuwait are the GCC states that have been most willing to seriously consider Russia’s proposal for a political solution to the Syrian conflict that includes Assad. Oman’s position can be explained by its long-standing use of mediation to maximize its regional influence. Omani foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi’s October 26 meeting with Assad, and the country’s active support for a U.S.-Iranian thaw during last year’s nuclear-deal negotiations, reveal how Muscat can increase its international status through diplomacy. While Oman remains a peripheral actor in the Gulf, the support of any GCC country is a victory from Russia’s standpoint, as it adds to a growing coalition of Arab League countries favoring a political solution in Syria.

Kuwait has carved out a unique role in the Syrian conflict by adopting a stance that meets both Saudi Arabia and Russia halfway. In line with the GCC consensus, Kuwait has expressed solidarity with Syrian rebel groups. As Daniel DePetris noted in a July 2013 article for the National Interest, Kuwaiti private donors have provided enthusiastic support for anti-Assad forces in Syria. But by mid-2015, Kuwait had also aligned with Russia by supporting an all-inclusive political solution to the Syrian conflict and implicitly criticizing Riyadh’s belligerent anti-Assad approach.

Even though the UAE’s stance on Syria has at times been ambiguous, Russia has made some progress towards achieving a Kuwait- and Oman-style bargain with Abu Dhabi. On June 3, 2016, the UAE’s Federal National Council speaker praised Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov’s active role in promoting peace negotiations in Syria. Senior UAE officials have also expressed openness to a settlement involving all major political actors in Syria, including President Assad. Abu Dhabi’s shift in position differs strikingly from Saudi policy in Syria, and demonstrates Russia’s ability to pry GCC states away from Riyadh’s hegemony.

By diplomatically engaging Oman, Kuwait and the UAE on Syria, Russia has created a coalition to balance against the Saudi-Qatari bloc that dominates the GCC. As escalated Russian diplomatic activity in the Gulf has corresponded with Moscow’s strengthening of ties with Algeria, Iraq and Egypt, Putin has attempted to shift the Arab League consensus in Russia’s favor. Should he succeed, Saudi Arabia and Qatar could risk regional isolation if they do not moderate their intransigent opposition to Assad.

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To heighten this perception of Saudi isolation, Russia has attempted to strengthen its diplomatic relationship with Bahrain, even though Manama has effectively become a client state of Saudi Arabia. Bahrain’s willingness to risk reproach from Riyadh by signing arms deals with Russia, and openly negotiating with Putin on counterterrorism, is a powerful symbolic victory for Moscow. It also demonstrates that Saudi Arabia’s hegemony over its GCC allies is more fragile than it appears.

Saudi Arabia’s desire to set, rather than operate outside, the Arab League consensus on Syria could force King Salman to make diplomatic overtures towards Russia and soften his support for a swift overthrow of Assad. The process towards reconciliation between Russia and Saudi Arabia will likely be gradual, as Riyadh still distrusts Russian intentions. Many Saudi policymakers viewed Moscow’s decision to militarily intervene on Assad’s behalf with Iranian support in September 2015, as the ultimate betrayal. Saudi Arabia’s animosity towards Russia can be explained by the fact that Russia’s military actions occurred just weeks after comprehensive negotiations between Moscow and Riyadh. However, if it appears as if the Arab League consensus has swung in favor of an all-inclusive political solution to the Syrian conflict, Saudi Arabia could put these grievances aside and compromise with Moscow.

Should Saudi Arabia be willing to moderate its views on Syria, Russia will likely take steps to thaw its relationship with Riyadh. Instead of the military showdown that has often been predicted, Russian-Saudi relations are likely to transition into a cold peace for two reasons.

First, Russia’s recent dialogue with the United States on joint air strikes against Jabhat al-Nusra risks creating frictions between Moscow and Tehran. Iran is strongly opposed to conducting joint counterterrorism operations with the United States in Syria. Should U.S.-Russian cooperation against Nusra become a reality, Moscow will likely coordinate its military activities closely with Turkey. If Ankara softens its opposition to Assad and compromises with Russia in Syria, Saudi Arabia’s geopolitical position will erode considerably.

As New York-based RIAC expert Nikolay Pakhomov noted in May 2016, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have collaborated so extensively in Syria that they have even worked together in uniting jihadist groups under the Jaish al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) umbrella. As Saudi military efforts in Syria have relied extensively on Turkish assistance, Saudi Arabia is unlikely to retaliate against Turkey’s pivot towards Russia by unilaterally bolstering its financial support for Nusra. Saudi Arabia’s unwillingness to jeopardize its vital partnerships with the United States and Turkey could cause Riyadh to enter a cold peace with Russia by default.

Second, Russia has been less willing than Iran to suffer casualties in Syria and views its intervention on Assad’s behalf as finite. Even though the Russia-Syria alliance has strengthened considerably since the mid-2000s, the partnership has historically been inconsistent. Putin also wants to distance himself from the growing perception that Russia is exclusively backing Shia regimes in the Middle East.

These concerns mean that Russia’s alignment with the Syrian government is largely motivated by Putin’s desire to demonstrate to the Russian people that Russia is a great power with influence extending beyond the former Soviet region. Therefore, Putin is likely to ease tensions with Riyadh, if improving ties with Saudi Arabia will expand Russia’s power-projection capacity in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia’s arms contract negotiations with Moscow and rhetorical praise for Russia’s “great-power” status earlier this year indicate that Saudi diplomats are open to entering a nonaggression pact with Russia should the Arab League’s position on Syria shift away from Riyadh’s views. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is unlikely to engage in overtly hostile actions like funding jihadist organizations that explicitly target Russia, as Jonathan Schanzer and Boris Zilberman argued in October 2015. Instead, Saudi Arabia will focus its efforts on undermining the Russia-Iran partnership through covert diplomacy and rallying anti-Assad sentiments in the Arab League.

In short, Russia is using closer economic ties and diplomatic overtures towards the GCC countries as a stepping-stone for a diplomatic reengagement of Saudi Arabia on Putin’s terms. Even though Saudi Arabia desires Assad’s overthrow, Riyadh’s overarching agenda is to reduce its security dependence on the United States and maintain Saudi Arabia’s position as the Arab world’s most influential country. Therefore, Saudi Arabia is likely to respond favorably to Russian diplomatic overtures, if Putin can build a broad-based Arab coalition around a political solution to the Syrian crisis that includes Assad. Should Putin’s relationships with the GCC bloc continue to strengthen, Moscow’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is more likely to thaw than to descend into prolonged hostility.

Samuel Ramani is a DPhil candidate in International Relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford specializing in Russia-Middle East relations. He is also a journalist who contributes regularly to the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Diplomat and Russian International Affairs Council. He can be followed onTwitter at samramani2 and on Facebook at Samuel Ramani.

WASHINGTON — Donald J. Trump’s statements on Russia tend to follow a pattern. He will say something in support of the country, praising its leader or promising to realign some aspect of American policy to its benefit. Foreign policy experts will express outrage, and Mr. Trump, ever defiant, will refuse to budge.

But on Monday, he found a Russian policy he could not support: the country’s aggression againstUkraine, including its 2014 annexation of Crimea.

It began on Sunday, when Mr. Trump said of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, “He’s not going into Ukraine, O.K., just so you understand.”

When pressed, he added: “O.K., well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there.”

The muddled comments left analysts to guess at Mr. Trump’s meaning. Given his record of defending Russia, it seemed possible he was toeing the Kremlin line on Ukraine.

But on Monday, Mr. Trump said he had meant that, if he became president, his leadership would deter Russia from further meddling, a position consistent with his past statements.

That he for once backed out of a controversy, rather than embracing it, underscores how much Russia’s actions in Ukraine outraged world leaders: Even Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly stated his desire to work with Russia, will not defend them.

What happened in Crimea

With Ukraine in chaos, Russia deployed a small number of special forces out of uniform to the Crimean Peninsula. The Russian state news media blanketed the region with false reports that Ukrainian neo-Nazis were coming to cleanse Crimea of ethnic Russians, who are a majority there. Local pro-Kremlin groups agitated to secede to Russia.

The Russian forces, posing as local self-defense militias, seized key buildings and transit points, putting the region under an unannounced Russian occupation. A few days later, Mr. Putin sent in regular troops to restore order, as he described it. Crimea held an unmonitored referendum on leaving Ukraine to join Russia, which formally annexed the territory in March. Only a month later did Mr. Putin acknowledge that the “militias” had been Russian troops.

The annexation set the tone for Russia’s continuing intervention in Ukraine, blending 21st-century “hybrid” warfare methods — disinformation, deniable proxy forces, cyberattacks — with imperial power politics more typical of the 19th century.

It was the first successful war of territorial conquest since 1976, when Morocco annexed part of the Spanish colonial territory now known as Western Sahara, and it was the only one in Europe sinceWorld War II. Russia violated one of the most central norms of the postwar global order — that states would no longer seize one another’s territory — horrifying world leaders who see that norm as crucial for upholding peace.

Mr. Trump may have been correct when he said, “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were.” But the point is that such matters are, in this century, meant to be decided democratically, not by a military conquest shrouded in deception.

This may be why Mr. Trump, for all his praise of Mr. Putin, could not back him on Crimea.

The United States and the European Union placed severe sanctions on Russia to punish it for the annexation, but its meddling in Ukraine did not end.

The continuing war

Within a few weeks, pro-Russian separatist rebels began seizing towns in southeastern Ukraine, which has close cultural and political ties to Russia. Mr. Putin armed the rebels, independent analysts and Western intelligence agencies concluded, setting off a full-blown war.

While it initially appeared that Mr. Putin might be tempted to repeat his Crimea strategy in eastern Ukraine, he instead demanded that the region be given special autonomy, which would preserve Russian influence there. He stationed troops along Ukraine’s borders, hinting that he might invade to “protect” the region’s Russian speakers if Ukrainian troops tried to restore order.

When Ukraine tried exactly that over the summer, the once ragtag separatist rebels were suddenly seen operating heavy weapons systems, including powerful surface-to-air missiles. On July 17, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet was shot down over rebel-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, killing all 283 people on board.

Western leaders and analysts, furious with what they saw as a reckless Russian policy of arming rebels with equipment they did not know how to use, pushed for Ukraine to retake the rebel-held territory once and for all.

Many people expected that the downing of the plane would so embarrass Moscow that it would have to drop its support for the rebels and agree to peace efforts. Instead, Russia deepened its involvement: Under the cover of an “aid convoy” into Ukraine, Russian troops, tanks and artillerystreamed across the border, according to NATO officials.

Ukrainian troops captured young Russian men who said they were government troops ordered to invade, and Western intelligence agencies released satellite images showing what appeared to be a significant Russian invasion. Mr. Putin angrily denied that anything of the sort was occurring.

The Russian troops and tanks, having prevented Ukraine from retaking its territory, eventually receded. But the conflict has continued at a low boil ever since, sometimes eased temporarily by peace talks or cease-fires that never seem to go anywhere. Analysts suspect that Mr. Putin wants to maintain a “frozen conflict” to keep Ukraine, which has shifted to favor the West, weak and susceptible to Russian interference.

It shows the severity of this conflict, and the degree to which Moscow has appalled Western leaders, that Mr. Trump — for all his love of crossing the normal lines of political discourse — felt that defending it, even tacitly, would be going too far.

In the past week, the Republican presidential nominee has been pilloried for his comments expressing openness to Russia's annexation of Crimea, has called on the Russian government to share emails it possibly hacked from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and drawn rebukes from critics who say he's soft on a traditional US adversary.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden became the latest heavyweight in the George W. Bush administration to lash out at Trump when he criticized the candidate Monday night for making conflicting statements about his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I recognize that flexibility and creativity might actually be good selling used cars and selling real estate, but when you want to be the head of an international superpower, precision and consistency are really important," Hayden told CNN's Erin Burnett.

Hayden's comments come after Trump told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that he has no relationship with Putin -- a remark that conflicted with Trump's long history of saying the opposite and embracing Putin's praise for his candidacy.

finds that most Americans see the Russian leader differently, with nearly 6-in-10 viewing the country as unfriendly, and about half saying they think the Russian government is attempting to influence the outcome of the US presidential election.

President Barack Obama, speaking Tuesday at a White House news conference, said Russia's potential hacking of the DNC wouldn't necessarily prompt a complete freeze in relations between the the country and the United States.

Noting the FBI was still investigating the hack, Obama said cybersecurity was just another dispute on a long list between himself and Putin.

"If, in fact, Russia engaged in this activity, it's just one on a long list of issues that me and Mr. Putin talk about," Obama said. "I don't think that it wildly swings what is a tough, difficult relationship that we have with Russia right now."

The debate over Trump's sympathy for Putin or take on world affairs is more than an esoteric squabble over foreign policy, experts said. By calling into question established structures and alliances that have held since World War II, Trump is unsettling allies and encouraging potential instability that inevitably draws the US to intervene.

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In his "This Week" appearance, Trump also echoed Moscow's claim that Crimeans welcomed Russia's annexation and seemed to suggest that Russia hadn't entered Ukraine at all, telling host George Stephanopolous, "The people of Crimea, from what I've heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were."

As for Putin's foray into Ukraine, Trump said, "He's not going into Ukraine, Okay, just so you understand. He's not going to go into Ukraine, all right?"

"Well, he's already there, isn't he?" Stephanopolous replied.

Sunday's exchange came in the wake of an alleged Russian computer hack of the Democratic National Committee -- seen as an unprecedented foreign effort to interfere in a modern US election -- and Trump's own call to Russia, which he later described as "sarcastic," to help find deleted emails sent by Clinton.

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And the associations that his staffers have with Russian businesses and pro-Moscow interests complicates the campaign's efforts to push back against criticism on the subject and fend off questions about the Trump team's motivations.

Trump adviser Carter Page has extensive dealings with Gazprom, the Russian state-run energy company with strong ties to Putin and his inner circle. Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort consulted for former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich, a key Putin ally, until his ouster in February 2014. In the chaotic aftermath, Russian-backed separatists seized the Crimea, a Ukrainian territory that Moscow later annexed.

In this context, Trump's comments expressing admiration for Putin are unsettling, said Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia.

Trump's comments seemingly excusing Russia's invasion of Crimea throw into question his commitment to a system that has built a relatively peaceful and prosperous post-war order, said Farkas, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. At a time when Russia as abrogated arms control treaties and its planes are buzzing US ships in the Baltic Sea, Trump has praised Putin as a canny leader who he respects.

Since the end of WWII, there has been an existing consensus among nations that borders should not be altered by force. Russia has deviated from that twice, in Georgia in 2008 and again in Ukraine.

"The international system is set up the way it is, and has provided relative peace and prosperity for decades," Farkas said. "To violate that is shocking and the bipartisan response has been 'this can't stand.' "

"If we accept the position that big states can ride roughshod over little states, that treaties are irrelevant and that we don't care whether we have solemn commitments to allies we are encouraging further attacks against our allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East," said Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.

Whether the Crimean people welcomed Russia's invasion is irrelevant, said Blank, as "it was still a clear aggression of a country." And he noted that Trump's remarks have a potential ripple effect, providing an invitation for the estimated 25 million Russian minorities in post-Soviet states "to agitate for the dismemberment of their countries" and a return to the Russian fold.

"The international system is set up the way it is, and has provided relative peace and prosperity for decades," Farkas said. "To violate that is shocking and the bipartisan response has been 'this can't stand.' "

"The whole reason we have alliances like these is to deter countries like Russia from laying a finger on our allies. It's a way to prevent war, plain and simple," Farkas said.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Valeriy Chaly echoed Farkas' point Monday, telling CNN that while he didn't want to get involved in US election politics, Trump's comments concerned him.

"We count United States will be predictable, will have predictable leadership and predictable foreign policy," Chaly said.

The first female president of the United States faces her first major international conflict: Seeking to consolidate the Slavic nations of Eastern Europe, Russia has seized the three Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia—all members of NATO. That requires a response beyond just a caustic tweet or sharply worded press release. For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, there is serious talk of nuclear war.

This is the basis of 2017 War with Russia, the unsettling new book by General Sir Richard Shirreff, who retired in 2014 as NATO’s deputy supreme commander of Europe, as well as its highest-ranking British officer. Although 2017 is technically a novel, this “future history” is really just a war game on the printed page, its preoccupations much closer to those of von Clausewitz and Churchill than those of Woolf or Wordsworth. Shirreff’s book is subtitled “An urgent warning from senior military command,” and he makes plain in his introduction that the novel’s primary intention is to convey the urgency of containing Russian President Vladimir Putin. He likens today’s Mother Russia to Germany in the late 1930s, when it seized the Sudetenland in brazen contravention of established borders. War-weary Europe let the matter slide, hoping that talk of a Thousand Year Reich was just bluster.

“I’m worried, very worried, that we’re sleepwalking into something absolutely catastrophic,” Shirreff tells me, speaking on a Friday evening from his home in Hampshire, in the bucolic country outside of London. A graduate of Oxford who served in the British army, with deployments in the Middle East and the Balkans, he is not a natural writer, so the judgment of the Financial Times—that this is a “literary disaster”—is not as stinging as it might otherwise be, since that same review praised Shirreff’s grim geopolitical vision as one of “profound importance.” 2017 is an unabashedly didactic work, a real-life warning with the bold-faced names changed.

The novel opens with the Russians staging an attack on a school in Donetsk, the breakaway region of the Ukraine controlled by pro-Kremlin separatists since 2014. Close to 100 children are killed, and Ukrainian forces are blamed, thus giving the Russians the perfect pretext for further aggression.Russia used a similar ploy—the bombing of several apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999—to begin the first Chechen War. But let’s not give Putin too much credit: He likely learned the tactic from Hitler, who was probably behind the Reichstag fire of 1933, which allowed the Nazis to eliminate political opponents before moving on to more grandiose aims.

A member of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic forces stands guard near buildings destroyed during battles with Ukrainian armed forces, at Donetsk airport, Ukraine, June 1. Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

The Ukrainian operation is only the start. Putin—his identity is very lightly disguised by Shirreff, as is that of Hillary Clinton, though he says she wasn’t necessarily his model for the American president—has his eyes on the Baltics, which Russia has long regarded as its birthright. The Kremlin is bolstered by a conviction that Western Europe and the United States will do anything to avoid the use of force. “The West may have great economic capability, but they think only of social welfare,” one Kremlin adviser says in 2017. “They have forgotten to stand up for themselves.”

When I spoke to Shirreff, he lamented the ease with which Russia invaded both Georgia (2008) and the Ukraine (2014). “That was a slick, very professionally executed operation,” he says of the conquest of Crimea, one that Putin may well try to replicate in the Baltics, given how little genuine resistance he encountered from the West two years ago. “Russia despises weakness and respects strength,” Shirreff tells me. It’s no accident that, every few months, the nation goes agog over images of Putin, stolid and shirtless, wrestling a bear or cuddling with a Siberian tiger.

Until a few weeks ago, most American readers of 2017 would not have thought twice about the preface by James Stavridis, the now-retired American admiral who served as the NATO Supreme Commander of Europe. But in July, media outlets reported that Stavridis was being seriously considered by Clinton as her vice presidential candidate. If he is to serve as an advisory role in her presidency, his view of Russia would be useful. And as presented here, that view is utterly unambiguous: “Of all the challenges America faces on the geopolitical scene in the second decade of the 21st century, the most dangerous is the resurgence of Russia under President Putin.” When Mitt Romney said as much during his 2012 presidential bid, he was mocked for stoking anachronistic Cold War fears. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” President Obama said glibly of Romney’s warning.

But the 1980s actually saw the rise of nuclear disarmament, as well as a broader thawing of Russo-American relations. This moment, the one we live in, feels closer to the 1960s, with American missile defense shields rising in the former Soviet bloc countries of Romania and Poland, as well as military exercises that seem like preparations for the real deal. Annoyed by such exercises in Eastern Europe conducted by NATO, a Kremlin senior official put the matter as bluntly as one of Shirreff’s characters: “If NATO initiates an encroachment—against a nuclear power like ourselves—it will be punished.” This kind of bluster could easily have come from the Kremlin of Khrushchev, as both sides prepared for mutual assured destruction.

I spoke to Shirreff just days after hackers universally believed to be associated with the Kremlin broke into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, a breach the director of national intelligence called “a version of war” (though he also tried to temper suggestions that Russia was at fault). Donald Trump openly encouraged further such incursions, as long they helped his quest for the White House.

When I first spoke with Shirreff, he declined to comment on Trump’s overtures to the Kremlin, but by the next morning, he’d changed his mind and sent me an email that said, in part: “What could suit Putin better than to embarrass the Democrats and so propel into the White House a candidate who has undermined NATO’s doctrine of collective defence by raising questions over America’s willingness to support an ally if attacked?” He was referring to Trump’s suggestion that the United States would not come to the aid of NATO allies who hadn’t made the requisite defense expenditures.

Russian warships sail past exploding anti-missile ordnance during a rehearsal for the Navy Day parade in the far eastern port of Vladivostok, Russia, July 30. Yuri Maltsev/Reuters

It is far more likely, according to most projections, that the next president will be Clinton, a longtime foe of Putin who has shown a willingness to use American force abroad. Shirreff believes that nuclear war with Russia is a possibility: Kaliningrad, a region of Russia that borders the Baltic States, now serves as a growing repository for both conventional and nuclear weapons, including Iskander missile systems that have nuclear capability and a range of 300 miles. These could be fired at the West—and will be, if Putin finds Russia’s borders with Europe threatened. Of course, if he invades the Baltics, such a counterattack would be required by the “collective defense” doctrine of the North Atlantic Treaty, known as Article 5. “If NATO goes to war with Russia,” Shirreff says, “that means nuclear war.”

His solution is paradoxical: a show of strength and unity by NATO that would discourage any offensive moves on Russia’s part, so that NATO’s strength would never be tested. In other words, frighten Russia into acceptable, rational-actor behavior. Shirreff adds that Trump is “absolutely right” about many European nations failing to meet their financial obligations to NATO, even if the failed casino magnate couched his criticism in undue threats about abandoning treaty commitments. “Europe needs to step up to the mark,” Shirreff says.

He also says the West needs to commit once more to a dialogue with Russia. That’s made harder by the fact that Russia is always sensitive to lectures from the West, resentful about perceived condescension from Europe and the U.S. Still, stony silence is unlikely to bring a resolution. “Communication” is what Shirreff hopes for, not war. “But it’s gotta be backed up by strength.”

Duel Purpose

08.01.16 5:30 PM ET

Why Did Russia Send ‘The Terminator’ on a Humanitarian Mission in Syria?

Russia’s Defense Ministry says the aircraft was returning from a ‘humanitarian cargo’ mission. If so, it was a strange model to use.

While we don’t yet know which rebel group shot down a Russian military helicopter in Syria today, killing all five on board, photographic and video evidence of the wreckage reveals that what Russia is presenting as a pacific tool of humanitarian aid was in fact an assault craft rigged with rocket pods.

According to General Sergei Rudskoy, the helicopter had been returning to the Russian-operated Hmeemeem Air Base, in the coastal province of Latakia, after delivering food and medical supplies to Aleppo when it was shot down by “ground fire.” He also claimed that the area where the copter crashed, near the city of Saraqeb, is controlled by Jabhat al-Nusra, the former name of al-Qaeda’s official franchise in Syria.

Yet no rebel group has yet claimed credit for the downing.

The bodies of two of the crew were abused on camera, being dragged around and stamped on by Syrians surveying the wreckage, according to a video uploaded to YouTube by the Thiqa Agency, which appears to be a Syrian news-gatherer that began covering the war four months ago.

Photos of the passports and otherdocuments belonging to the crew have appeared online, one of them identifying an Oleg Shelamov from Torzhok. This man has beentracked by the Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a group of independent Russian investigative bloggers, to a military unit in Klin that operated the type of helicopter that was downed. He was the pilot.

According to General Rudskoy, the two passengers on board were officers from the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of the Opposing Sides in Syria, a Potemkin peace-building initiative meant to lend a gloss of humanitarianism to the Kremlin’s war for Assad.

The Mil Mi8-AMTSh, nicknamed “the Terminator,” is an assault variant of the veteran transport helicopter, equipped with multiple hard points for carrying missiles and unguided rockets. In several videos of the wreckage we can see a B-8V20A rocket pod.

“In this case, the Mi-8 AMTSh appears to have been fitted with two B-8V20A rocket pods, each capable of carrying 20 80 mm S-8 rockets. From the images available so far, it is not clear whether the rocket pods were loaded. The helicopter in question was also equipped with the Prezident-S electronic countermeasures suite, designed to warn and protect the aircraft against anti-aircraft threats emanating from the ground, as well as naval and aerial platforms.”

If the rocket pods were empty, then the helicopter either took off unarmed—rather inadvisable in a war zone—or had fired all of its munitions before crash-landing.

While it’s not uncommon for helicopter gunships to be repurposed for noncombat missions, such as medical evacuations, Moscow says this aircraft was delivering humanitarian cargo. Archival footage shows demonstrably cramped quarters inside the “Terminator” for the transport of crates of food and medicine, even absent two passengers.

Christopher Harmer, a military analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast, “To a far greater extent than the United States, Russian transport helicopters are designed for dual use in an attack role. The Mi-8 was originally designed as medium-lift utility transport but the Russians use it extensively as an attack helicopter. This particular model may have been selected so that they could portray the mission as humanitarian in nature, but the overwhelming majority of Russian rotary-wing operations in Syria are attack missions.”

Regardless of whether the Russian claim that the helicopter was returning from a humanitarian mission is true, the fact that it was carrying rocket pods meant that it would have been perceived as a real threat from the ground, making it a legitimate target.

As Jenzen-Jones noted, this is not the first of the type to be blown up in Syria.

On November 24, a Mi-8AMTSh was destroyed on the ground by fighters from the First Coastal Division of the Free Syrian Army using a U.S.-made TOW missile, killing one Russian marine. The helicopter had been taking part in the search and rescue effort to recover the navigator from the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 bomber that was shot down by Turkish fighters earlier that day.

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»The Briefing: Putin's Purge01/08/16 07:29 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. On this week's Power Vertical Briefing, we look at the fallout and implications of last week's massive shake-up of regional and federal elites in Russia.

»After Alexander30/07/16 18:37 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinksmikenova shared this story from Washington Free Beacon. In 336 B.C., on the death of his father, Alexander the Great set out to conquer an empire—the largest empire the ancient world had ever known. It reached from Greece to India along ...

Reviews

Reviews

The statistical effects of the October 28 Letter | Federal Bureau of Investigation - NYT

"Many good questions could and should al-zo be asked when Mr. Comey testifies in the closed session of the House Intelligence Committee next week... Comey's overall "motivations" might be complex and and at the same time simple: the security of the country. The details of these complexities are not easy to read..." - by Michael Novakhov - 4.25.17

Gangs, Intelligence Services, and Politics

M.N.: It would be unforgivably naive to suppose that the U.S. criminal Underworld is not controlled these days by the Russian Mafia, and, in turn, by the Russian Intelligence Services. It would also be unforgivably naive to suppose that there are no messages contained in the various criminal acts, and that there are no connections between the Underworld's recent operations and the present situation in the U.S., including the present investigations. As a matter of facts and the investigative leads, they might hold and provide the most easily accessible clues. Attention, the FBI and the significant others: do access these clues.

Smoke and Fire: The Trumputkins, the Trumpumpkins, "The Tillerson Ultimatum", and bad, bad Assad

By Michael Novakhov: So, the Trump - Putin mysterious marriage is on the rocks... The unresolved issues, whatever, whoever, and however triggers the attention to them and their discussions, have to be resolved: soundly, timely, fundamentally, and the long-term; otherwise they come back and accumulate, and together with the other unresolved issues, snowball and cause the avalanches. Nobody needs this mess, enough snow jobs everywhere... That's what Mishustin thinks...

"If you really want to fight ISIS, look into its origins and essence first." - Fight Against "ISIS"

In the opinion of the great many observers, those "sham" groups are nothing more than the creations and proxies of the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU), formed on the basis of the coalitions of the disaffected ex- Baathist Saddam's military (and first of all, military intelligence officers, historically tied with the GRU), with the "rebels-for-hire", and the Assad's Syrian Intelligence Services, which are also the proxies of the GRU.

"Trumpism" as the "social-political experiment" and the "Gang of Four"

The engineered election of Donald Trump as the U.S. President is the joint operation of the German, Russian, and Israeli Intelligence Services with the major executive and operational role played by the Russian-Jewish Mafia at the head of the International Organized Crime - by Michael Novakhov

Tillerson's Complaint:

"Lavrov won't dance with me..."

Lavrov's Response:

"My mama done tol' me... A man's a two-face..."

Vovchick "The Tarantula", why were you so "loud"?!

For Russia (or any other state), this extraordinary, unusual, demonstrative, primitive, blatant "loudness" was like digging her own grave with regard to the US - Russian relations, especially at the time when their improvement and the relief of sanctions is so desired by them, and no doubts, they would understand this very well. This peculiarity in this affair points to the possible deliberate set-up from the third party... The US - Russia - Germany triangle and the role of the revived German intelligence in it after the WW2 have to be examined under the most powerful microscope, in all their hidden details, and in the historical perspective.

Mike Nova's Shared NewsLinks Review

Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks

Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks

Howl!

The America of my dreams: Shattered. Raped.

The King Trump - by Michael Novakhov

The public prayers for His Majesty's health, wealth, and well-being, and also for the development of his additional intellectual capacities should be held no less than three times a day in all public squares, government offices, courthouses, and the places of worship, and also in all the private and public toilets, with the benefit of generating the taxable and multiple extra-flushes. Hopefully, it will flush out in due time.

The Information Age

All the relevant information at your fingertips: Information is not a commodity for sale but one of the most vital and important inalienable rights. To paraphrase Descartes: "I have access to information therefore I am". ("Information Age" - post of 11.30-21.13 | Image from: Information - Google Images)